


no matter how far you unbend

by Squishychickies



Category: Batman - All Media Types, DCU, Nightwing (Comics)
Genre: Abusive Relationships, Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Bruce Wayne is a Good Parent, Crying, Depression, Dick Grayson Gets a Hug, Dick Grayson Needs a Hug, Dick Grayson is Nightwing, Dick Grayson-centric, Dissociation, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/M, Gen, Hurt Dick Grayson, Hurt/Comfort, Nightwing Volume 2 Issue 093, Panic Attacks, Platonic Cuddling, Rape Aftermath, Rape Recovery, Rape/Non-con Elements, Vomiting, in canon Dick was in a relationship with her for weeks after Blockbuster, so this is that basically
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-31
Updated: 2020-12-31
Packaged: 2021-03-11 01:42:34
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,379
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28447104
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Squishychickies/pseuds/Squishychickies
Summary: Laying there in bed, letting Catalina take what she wanted to take, an idea had occurred to Dick.This, he had thought, is an unhealthy relationship.---In the weeks after Blockbuster's murder, Dick is trapped in a toxic relationship with Catalina.His family will do anything to rescue him.
Relationships: Catalina Flores/Dick Grayson, Dick Grayson & Alfred Pennyworth, Dick Grayson & Bruce Wayne, Tim Drake & Dick Grayson
Comments: 16
Kudos: 430





	no matter how far you unbend

**Author's Note:**

> tw for rape and abusive relationships
> 
> If that topic is going to trigger you, please don't read! I want you all to stay safe, healthy and happy.
> 
> For those who do choose to read:
> 
> It's canon that after Tarantula raped Dick in Nightwing 93, he stayed in an unhealthy relationship with her for weeks. At one point she even tried to make him marry her. This is that explored, as well as what would have happened if Bruce had been there for him.
> 
> Previously I had this posted anonymously, but eh, screw it. This is ao3 lmao its already as anonymous as its gonna get to be real with you lol

If, Dick thinks clinically, the root of all suffering is desire, then factually speaking, there must be something he desires.

And if, so follows the logic, Dick is experiencing desire, then he is also suffering, and therefore he is not numb. Not entirely. 

The thought should be comforting. Should soothe the cold, buzzing static in his head, in his fingertips. And to an extent, it does. It’s good to be able to replace the routine of miserable tedium and the hopeless despair it inspires in Dick with facts. Facts, inarguable and solid, and philosophy.

Life with Catalina is--monotonous. For Dick, at least. To her it’s exciting liberation. It’s a whole new world opening up before her authoritative gait. It’s opportunities blossoming like freshly bloomed flowers, ripe for Catalina to pick.

For Dick--it is not that. For Dick, it’s a last resort. It’s where he goes and what he does when there’s nowhere else to go and nothing else to do, because he’s tried to pay his debts, tried to pray his penance for his sins, and has on both counts been judged inadequate. He follows in Catalina’s shadow because it hides him. Because he does not want for his flaws to be revealed by the sunlight. Because he has run out of options.

Sometimes he’s angry about it. If Dick ever found out a member of his family was in his position--was listless and empty and suffering--he would do everything in his power to help them.

Would that still be the case, he has to ask himself, if one of his family members had killed someone?

Yes, Dick likes to think. He likes to think he would drop everything. Come running. Save the day.

Outside of Dick and Catalina’s hotel room, the hallway is filled with the sound of pounding footsteps. Dick raises his head off the pillow to listen, opening his eyes to half-lidded.

The door swings open, slamming against the wall with a smack. In runs Catalina, in full Tarantula get-up. She’s sweating with exertion, panting, chest heaving up and down. For a moment she pauses to catch her breath, and it’s the only sound in the small motel room. Then she springs into action again, shutting the door and securing it with two separate locks. 

_“Querido,”_ she pants, moving across the room to throw clothing from the hotel room’s wardrobe into a suitcase, “we have to go. I think they’ve found us. I don’t know how.”

Dick doesn’t react to her words. _Who_ has found them? And why not let them come? His eyes slip shut again. He doesn’t really want to, like, go on the run right now. He’s comfortable under the covers of this queen-sized bed, head against the pillows, hidden in the dim half-light of late evening.

Another reason he doesn’t want to get out of bed is that he’s pretty sure he’s not wearing any clothes. Last night he and Catalina--

Did something, he thinks. Or, he had let her do things. Because he wasn’t really feeling up to active participation, but it was a lot easier to lie there and let her do her thing than to resist. Resistance requires effort, and Dick just--he’s all out of effort to give.

Laying there in bed, letting Catalina take what she wanted to take, an idea had occurred to Dick.

This, he had thought, is an unhealthy relationship.

But, he had then reasoned, it’s easier to stay than to leave. So Dick stays--stays with Catalina. In their hotel room. In their bed, under their covers, against the pillows that smell like sex and cheap perfume.

_Do you like being alone, Dick?_

_Shut up, Rolly, just shut up!_

“Goddamnit,” Dick hears Catalina say, “I hate it when you get like this.” He opens his eyes to impatient fingers snapping in front of his face. “Get up, come on.”

Dick does not get up. But he also doesn’t protest at the feeling of Catalina’s cool fingers, brushing against his naked chest as she pulls the blankets down. To protest requires dissent. Dissent requires a cause, a worthy cause, and Dick has been judged, has been weighed by the scales of justice, and he has been found unworthy every single time.

“Richard,” Catalina scolds, having pulled the blanket away entirely to reveal his form lying limply on the mattress, “have you not gotten dressed all day?”

The answer is obvious, so he doesn’t answer. She doesn’t expect him to. 

“My poor baby,” she coos, running an affectionate hand through his hair and pressing a kiss, red with lipstick, to his forehead. “You must not be feeling well.”

He’s not. He’s suffering.

And, Dick thinks, if desire is the root of all suffering--

He must desire something.

He must desire _her._

So goes the logic, so goes the passing of time spent hazily in bed, so go the seasons passing by with as much guarantee as life and death.

So goes Catalina. She bustles about the room in a flurry, packing up all their belongings in her unassuming brown suitcase. There’s only one suitcase between the two of them, so she packs all their clothes up together--not that, in Dick’s case, that amounts to much.

If he was going to leave her--

If he was going to leave her, he would have to buy his own suitcase. Unzip the one Catalina’s stuffed full. And sort his possessions from hers. It sounds like a lot of work, and Dick’s just not up to it.

Dick heard once that a man who loves his job never works a day in his life. But he doesn’t think that’s true. Because he _loves_ being Nightwing. Doesn’t know what he’d do without it. But it is work. Hard, violent work.

He’d loved being a cop, too.

All things must come to an end. All good things, even more so.

She dresses him, and he lets her. It’s good to be wearing something--good to feel _covered._ Not that he has anything left to hide--not that there’s anything Catalina hasn’t exposed to let dry in the open air--but physically, at least, coverage is good.

He wonders why he let her take his clothes off him in the first place.

Anyways. It feels good to be wearing something, and the water she brings to him in a little plastic cup tastes refreshing even though it’s probably just the sketchy motel tap water. Finally, finally, he stands.

“Who found us?” Dick asks belatedly, voice rough from underuse. It’s a question that’s only just occurred to him.

“Your family, querido,” she says.

“Oh,” says Dick. The answer is not the one he’d been expecting. Already he wants to lie down again, to bury his head in the pillows and forget--

But if he does that he won’t get back up.

“Why are we running from my family?” he asks after a minute. 

“Querido,” she says, voice warm and sympathetic and sweet; pitying. “You really think your father would be alright with what we did? He will be wanting to arrest us.”

The logic, Dick knows, is sound. But he flinches back from the reminder of his crime. The act of violence that, no matter how much of himself Dick gives away, he will never be able to repay.

He thinks of a poem Jason used to like to read:

_I took an axe to a willow, to see how it wept._

_I took an axe to a salmon, to see how it leapt._

_I took a bullet to a villain’s goddamn head because he deserved to be fucking dead--_

But that’s not how the poem goes, is it? Dick doesn’t know how it ends. Jason would. He misses him, suddenly.

Catalina’s face softens, and she reaches out a gentle hand to caress his cheek. “Richard, my darling. I know you miss your family. But they will never forgive you for this. The Batman apprehends killers, no? That is who you are now. You can’t change it. You can only move on.”

_Don’t you think I know that,_ Dick wonders.

“Okay,” he says. He wonders what _moving on_ constitutes for Catalina.

Will she move on from him?

\---

Out in the hallway, Catalina makes Dick roll their suitcase. He says yes, because _no_ is not a word he knows how to use yet, in relation to her and her wants and her needs. He walks behind Catalina, in her shadow, and rolls the suitcase behind himself, in his own. Everything he owns is in there. Everything he owns and everything Catalina owns and if it weren’t an--

\--an _unhealthy_ relationship--

\--then it might be a symbol of unity. 

They are too late. Dick is not surprised, because if the Batman wants to find you, he will, no matter how fast you get the hell into hiding. But also because he isn’t sure he has the capacity to feel surprise at the moment. Surprise requires expectation. Expectation requires normalcy, and normalcy has been ripped away from Dick one fire, explosion, and gunshot at a time.

“Dick,” growls Bruce. He’s wearing a fancy sweater vest, leaning against his Porsche, looking terribly out of place in the parking lot of this ugly motel.

Dick doesn’t say anything. He’s looking at the Porsche. He misses it, he thinks. It had been his favorite car of Bruce’s. Had it been a conscious decision to drive it here today?

Probably. Very few of Bruce’s choices are coincidental, especially when it comes to his children.

“I have been calling your phone for three days,” Bruce rumbles, holding up his own smartphone to demonstrate.

It would make sense why Dick hasn’t received the calls. His phone was in his apartment when Blockbuster made it all go _boom._

“I lost it,” Dick says.

“I’ll buy you a new one.” That segment of conversation concluded, Bruce turns sharp, narrowed eyes onto Catalina. She’s put a hoodie on--one of Dick’s--over the top half of her Tarantula uniform, and she isn’t wearing her mask, so she just looks like a civilian.

Though, Dick thinks, she only ever was a civilian. Because she does not qualify as a hero.

“And you are?” asks Bruce, too shrewdly to be Brucie Wayne but too politely to be Batman.

“Catalina Flores,” she introduces sweetly, grabbing Bruce’s hand to shake it. “Richard and I are together now. And actually we are about to be leaving, so…”

Dick doesn’t know if Catalina has made the connection yet that Bruce Wayne is Batman. Either way, she’s clearly playing it dumb. Dick stares at his father--more specifically, he stares at his father’s feet, clad in black leather shoes that shine against the asphalt--and feels a surge of grief.

Bruce cannot love a murderer for a son. The least he can do is show compassion--hug Dick one last time before he is locked behind bars forever. Maybe Bruce won’t even do Dick the honor of arresting him personally--will turn his head and say _get out of my sight,_ and Dick will fall to his knees to be arrested by some other, nameless, faceless apprehender.

Maybe he will spare Catalina. It wasn’t her fault Dick failed her so utterly.

“Actually,” Bruce says pointedly, “I’d like to speak to Dick.”

Catalina narrows her eyes and moves closer to Dick. Puts one arm around his waist posessively, and uses the other to trace gentle touches across his chest and stomach, barely-there caresses soft as a butterfly’s wings. “My beloved is not feeling well,” she says in a calculated tone, layered over with shoddily-concealed threat. “I am taking him somewhere to rest.”

“I am his father,” says Bruce. “He can come home and rest at the manor. I know you want what’s best for him.”

“I don’t think that you _know_ what’s best for him.” Catalina’s butterfly touches migrate to the skin under Dick’s shirt. He wants to squirm away, to ask why she’s doing this in front of his father, but, again. Effort.

Dick stares at Bruce’s feet, feeling lower than the dirty ground beneath them.

Suddenly there is a hand on Dick’s shoulder, firmer and bigger and warmer than Catalina’s. Dick startles and looks up. It’s Bruce, expression flinty and unyielding. “I think you should go,” he tells Catalina firmly.

She reaches under her hoodie--Dick’s hoodie, she stole it from him, it was one of the only things he had left and she took it and she dirtied it and now he’ll never wear it again--with slow, casual, cautious movements. Grips something. Produces one of her blow-darts.

Before she can even consider using it against Bruce, there is a powerful fist enclosing her wrist, squeezing with only enough restraint not to break it. She lets out an intimidated _eep!_ and stumbles back. Her hand is gone from Dick’s belly. He exhales. 

“I will be alerting the authorities to come collect you,” says Bruce, quiet as a mouse but cold as a glacier and commanding as a soldier. “You’re a murderer and a rapist. And you will face justice.”

Her face colors in anger. Dick’s face pales in shock.

A _rapist?_

When had Catalina ever raped anybody?

Why is this his first time hearing about it?

Disgusted, Dick takes a step back, and almost loses his footing. Bruce steadies him with a hand to his elbow, so he’s got Catalina’s wrist in one hand and Dick’s arm in the other. He stands between them, like a barrier. A wall. A protector.

“I never _raped_ him!” Catalina hisses furiously, struggling against Bruce’s grip. It’s an exercise in futility. Once the Batman’s got a hold of you--

Once the Batman’s got a hold of you, he never lets go. 

“Richard!” she cries. She’s spitting mad like a bull in a fight, but she’s got skinny little arms like a butterfly--like a spider, all spindly and thin--and she can’t escape. “Tell him he’s wrong! Tell him how much you love me! It wasn’t rape if you love me--we’re going to get _married--_ Querido _please,_ tell him.”

And, with a dull ringing building in his ears, Dick realises.

Catalina Flores, it occurs to him, is a rapist.

And it was _he_ who she had violated.

It’s like an out-of-body experience as he turns abruptly and pukes all over the ground before he even knows he’s going to be sick, barely missing Bruce’s shoes and his own. A buzzing wave of _something_ is building in his chest, too heavy for his legs to hold up--Bruce’s grip on his elbow prevents him from falling into the puddle of vomit as his knees buckle under him. Still grasping Catalina’s wrist, Bruce helps Dick over to the Porche and lets him lean against it.

“Sit in the car, Dick,” Bruce is murmuring, and it’s a wonder Dick can even hear it through the static in his ears.

Dick does. He sits in the car. His chest feels constricted, like something’s crushing it--

\--like someone has a hand on him and is pushing him into a concrete rooftop.

Between a rock and a hard place.

Between a rapist and a rooftop.

Breathing against the pressure is a challenge. It’s almost not worth it. He coughs, and gags and retches, and hyperventilates all the same. 

At some point, the door on the driver’s side of the car opens with a click, and Bruce enters. Catalina is nowhere to be seen, but Bruce has the suitcase. 

“Don’t want it,” Dick gasps out as Bruce moves to put it into the backseat of the car.

“Don’t want what?” Bruce asks, voice impossibly soft. Sometimes when he makes his voice all quiet it's so that the intimidating coldness is emphasized, but other times its kindness. And now Dick thinks it’s the compassion, and not the anger, but that can’t be right. Because Dick is a murderer. And the extent of Bruce’s kindness towards murderers is not deigning to join their ranks by exacting fatal justice.

Dick’s hyperventilating again, so he just points at the suitcase. 

Bruce looks confused. He asks, “This?” Then he opens it up and rifles through it to extract Dick’s Nightwing supplies. He takes the rest and tosses all of it, every last bit, right out into a dumpster outside the hotel. He slams the dumpster shut, and the sound echoes like a gunshot. Then Bruce rejoins Dick in the Porsche. 

The wave of crushing emotion is still building in Dick’s hollow, breathless chest, rising up and threatening to choke him. It’s like every emotion he hasn’t felt during his terrifying stint of numbness is returning, demanding to be felt, and it’s almost too much to bear--like it might kill him. Is this how dying feels? Is this how Blockbuster felt?

This is how Dick feels. This is _suffering,_ no question about it.

If desire is the root of all suffering, Dick knows all of a sudden what he desires. What he’s _been_ desiring, for so long, for _months_ as Blockbuster _tortured_ him--

He wants love, he wants his dad, he wants support and to be protected and to not have to be scared anymore--

He wants forgiveness for what he’s done--forgiveness for the unforgivable deed, for the unforgivable _person_ he couldn’t stop himself from becoming--

Bruce turns to him with heartbroken eyes. “Chum,” he pleads. “Son. Dick. It’s okay. You can breathe.”

Dick can’t. He leans forward, over the divider between the seats, and Bruce reaches over to put his arms around him. “I killed him,” Dick makes himself admit between gasping breaths. “I couldn’t--I couldn’t stop her--it was never going to stop.”

“You didn’t kill him,” Bruce says firmly.

It’s like Bruce has taken the belt around Dick’s chest, and _tightened._ He feels something prickling behind his eyes--a lump building in his throat--

Wetness spilling down his cheeks. 

“Yes, I did,” Dick insists, because the first step to forgiveness is confession, and he just can’t hold the truth inside him any longer. “It was my fault he died.” His voice comes out cracked and wobbly and thick in a way he hasn’t heard it sound in years. He hates it, hates to hear himself, but he can’t control it anymore.

He can’t control anything. Never could.

“I know what happened,” Bruce says. “Your--friend--Amy, saw what happened. She was worried you would be arrested for Tarantula’s crimes. So she came to me, and told me the truth.

“She told me all of it. I’m so sorry for how you’ve suffered.”

Dick squeezes his eyes shut. Wishes he could cover his ears. He doesn’t want to hear any of this, because he knows it’s all too good to be true. Knows that even if Bruce doesn’t think it’s worth arresting him, he’ll still not ever be forgiven--

And then, Bruce tightens his embrace. Kisses the top of Dick’s head. Murmurs, “Sweetheart. 

“I forgive you.”

The wave of emotion reaches its peak and comes crashing down like a tidal wave, releasing the pressure in Dick’s chest and letting all the feeling flood through him, knocking down his barriers like they’re just spindly palm trees on a beach in a tsunami, and there is nothing that can get in its way. Dick can’t speak but he can _sob,_ and he does even though it’s embarrassing, because he is so beyond embarrassment right now it’s like a foriegn concept. Bruce forgives him. Bruce _loves_ him. _That’s_ a concept so alien, Dick hadn’t even dared to hope it was a possibility. 

It’s finally, finally penance, it’s absolution, it’s all of the debt he has yet to pay relieved. Dick has stood on the scaffold, has awaited his sentencing, has been found _innocent,_ and all of the weight of guilt is gone from his shaking shoulders. It’s been so long, he never knew they could feel so light. It’s felt like an endless eternity. 

And now it’s over.

“I’m so sorry,” Dick sobs, “I’m--I didn’t know what to do.”

“Sweetheart, it’s okay,” Bruce says, running a hand through his unkempt hair to smooth it. “You did your best. And that’s all you have to give.”

\---

The authorities come to pick up Catalina and Bruce drives Dick home in the Porsche. The drive is long and Dick is not feeling very chatty, but Bruce turns on the radio and fills the car with soft, peaceful music. Dick lets himself drift with it. Sometimes it’s nice not to think. And despite his uneventful day in bed, he’s feeling terribly tired after his bout of emotion. So he drifts and dozes, and soon, they’re home.

Bruce parks in the garage, and though it’s only fifteen feet to the door from there, the distance has never felt longer. If it’s not the destination that matters but the journey, Dick doesn’t want this leg of the journey to come to an end, because starting anew and moving on sounds so exhausting and difficult. He wants to stay nestled against the soft leather seats in the Porsche forever, where it’s comfy and warm and there is no one to judge him but himself.

Dick opens the car door and steps out. Bruce is by his side instantly, like he never left, and some guilty, clenching part in Dick wonders, _why weren’t you here all along?_

Because Dick didn’t want that. He’d wanted to be his own hero.

Some hero he was.

Bruce offers Dick a hand to hold and it’s so unprecedented that Dick has to stare at the proffered palm for several seconds before he realizes what Bruce is giving him. He accepts the gift, rare and precious as a pearl, and clasps it jealously in his shaking fingers. Bruce’s hand is firm and steadying, dry and smooth against Dick’s own sweaty palm. 

Alfred is waiting for them at the door the way he always is--loyal to the very end, as immovable as a boulder. His face, wrinkled and familiar and so, so loving, softens when he sees Dick. “My dear boy,” he whispers, moving forward to caress Dick’s cheek like he’s an expensive, delicate treasure, “I’ve missed you.”

Dick lets Alfred hug him, and it’s almost enough to tear another round of tears out of him. He should have known that Alfred would stay by his side. Alfred has always stood by him--has always weathered whatever storms they suffered through together, stoic and solid and ready to offer tea or perhaps a load of laundry whenever it was called for. 

They hold each other tightly for a moment before Alfred draws back, avoiding Dick’s eyes, like he’s embarrassed by something. When Alfred clears his throat, Dick understands why. “I’ve prepared your room,” he says in a choked-sounding voice. 

He’s made Alfred emotional. He can’t remember the last time that happened.

“Thank you,” Dick murmurs, and Alfred bustles away to go dust some lampshades or something to keep himself busy and his emotions kept in. Neither Bruce nor Dick call him on it.

Waiting in the living room is another surprise--Tim.

“Dick!” he exclaims when his brother walks in. Before Dick knows what’s happening, he’s been hit by what feels like a bus, and there are skinny arms around him.

Tim’s hugging him like he’s afraid something’s gonna drag him away. “We were so worried,” he says into Dick’s chest, voice muffled by the worn fabric. “I’m so glad you’re home. We never hang out anymore.”

Dick sniffles, much as he tries not to, and lifts a hand to brush it through Tim’s hair. “I’m sorry,” he offers. He wishes he’d been more present for his little brother, the way he hadn’t been for Jason. But, he realises, here is his chance to change that. It isn’t too late to be a good big brother for Tim--to be a role model. 

Or at least to try.

It’s a long moment before Tim releases him, but even then, he doesn’t let go of Dick’s hand. He uses it to drag Dick into the kitchen.

“You know how I’ve been trying to formulate the perfect shot of espresso?” he asks eagerly. He seems to have taken note of Dick’s tear stained face and haggard appearance, and seems determined to ignore it until it’s better.

Dick lets it happen. He follows his little brother into the kitchen, and notices how, because Tim is shorter than him, his shadow does not envelop Dick the way Catalina’s always did. Instead, Dick is exposed to the lights of the manor. Put on display, ready to be seen by those who love him.

Dick lets that happen, too.

"Dick is tired," Bruce warns Tim. It's a way out, should Dick require one.

He pauses for a moment, considering. Then he looks at Tim, so eager to accept him and welcome him and help him, and feels a tiny smile form. "I guess that means I'll need the espresso, then."

\---

He spends the whole rest of the evening with Tim, and it feels good. It feels right, like something he’s been missing for longer than he ever even realized. Whether or not Tim knows what happened with Blockbuster, he doesn’t treat Dick any differently. He treats Dick like a brother. Like family.

It’s wonderful.

Even more wonderful is when Tim invites him to stay in his room for the night. “Like a sleepover,” he explains, though Dick knows it is for his own benefit. “Come on. It’ll be fun.”

Dick curls up that night under the covers with his little brother pressed into his chest, and it’s the most precious gift he could ever have asked for. He wants to take a picture of this moment, wrap it up in soft blankets to keep it safe, protect it from the harsh realities of the world. He wants to do the same for his brother, he realizes, and that’s okay. He can protect Tim. He _will_ protect Tim. 

He doesn’t know if Tim’s asleep when Dick’s eyes begin to burn--doesn’t know if he sees the teardrops that drip slowly down his cheek or hears the sniffles that he tries to keep in. But.

He holds his brother closer to him.

And feels Tim grip him tightly back. 

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks so much for reading!!! I appreciate all comments, kudos, and bookmarks so much <3
> 
> Have a super awesome amazing spectacular day!
> 
> Also: the poem I referenced is Little Red Cap by Carol Ann Duffy. It's super wonderful. 
> 
> Title comes from Hooped Earrings by The Front Bottoms. The full line is:
> 
> She says you gotta promise not to break  
> No matter how far you unbend  
> She says I gotta shift my position  
> to try to get comfortable again.


End file.
